


Warning Signs

by trepidatingboarfetus



Category: Grand Theft Auto Series (Video Games), Grand Theft Auto V
Genre: But still some angst because it wouldn't be these guys without some, Just more repressed Michael, M/M, Sweet endings, When Coldplay songs you already used for Toxicity give you flipside ideas for Michael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 18:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30076113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trepidatingboarfetus/pseuds/trepidatingboarfetus
Summary: Yeah the truth isThat I missed you soAnd I'm tiredI should not have let you goMichael realizes that Trevor was always his island, but he'd passed him by.
Relationships: Michael De Santa/Trevor Philips
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	Warning Signs

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, I've been in the hospital, and this came to me the day after I got out as I was mopping. It literally came on my Trikey YouTube playlist (it's public and called A Flare Gun Through The Heart lol), and this is the song that inspired Toxicity, actually, so my head went to this place it normally does, where I thought, "Gee, what if this was reversed and in Michael's POV?" Which is what gave us this. Thank you, stupid ass brain. Anyway, it's a sweet ending. Always one of my favorite Coldplay songs. <3

He had missed him. That was the simple truth of everything as he stared down the barrel of the nine-millimeter semi-automatic, causing gleaming patterns to shift on the metal in the dimness provided by the moon and the bleak coverage that the graveyard security lights offered, and he realized it again later after they were gazing into their drinks at Shenanigan’s, murmuring drunkenly about the past.

He had missed out on a lot of fucking shit.

They were nearly a dozen drinks in when he recognized that they were rapidly approaching the good ol’ warning signs of ages past: a hand brushed his knee, then later fiddled with some stray hair employing the excuse that “it annoyed him,” stole sips from his Jameson despite “not being able to stomach that god-awful shit,” relaxed around his shoulder and tugged him close…and he hadn’t been blind to the way his old partner had deeply inhaled the junction of his neck behind his ear where the hairline touched as if he were some exquisite aroma to be savored.

And by the glimmer in his associate’s eyes, he could tell that might easily be the case.

There were ample amounts of signs there if he bothered to look, and he didn’t even have to strain that much. There was no feasible reason to _want_ to hang out regularly once again with the individual beside him as time after time had shown him. Fuckin’ hell, he’d left all of that behind so many years ago, and there he was, essentially letting fire give him a goddamn lapdance. Again. Dammit _again_.

But oh, he missed playing with fiery Trevor Philips so, so much, and he wasn’t wholly clear as to _why_. He was a cancer, a vicious damn disease. A reminder of so many hideous things they’d done to each other, the things he’d let himself do without a second thought, and how eagerly Trevor had taken it all in until he was ready to burst.

His mind sifted through excuses and laid them before him, beseeching him to be sensible, but for every defense as to why he _shouldn’t_ , there was one why he _should_. He turned into his own worst enemy in the end and shrugged, swilling down yet another glass in a long list he couldn’t hope to ever count.

They stumbled and slurred all over each other, howling their way out of the bar and back into Trevor’s Bodhi. There was no particular destination in mind, and both were possibly too tipsy to drive anywhere besides an alley or maybe Vespucci Beach if they were lucky, but it was the first time in forever that he could actually recall peering up at the sky to try seeing beyond the light pollution to the stars . He felt so fucking free in that moment, and his mind started to wonder…how long had it been since he’d last appreciated it?

Why did freedom and happiness invariably revolve around Trevor?

That notion haunted the fuck out of him, but at the same time, it made sense.

Trevor had been this fragment of a puzzle he could never quite make fit neatly into his life, and he had tried jabbing Trevor in everywhere so many times, but nothing ever worked. Trevor was this wild piece that belonged to an entirely different puzzle — something with jagged edges he was struggling to force into his symmetrical one. Maybe the dilemma wasn’t Trevor though, maybe it was how he’d always viewed the both of them. Maybe he, himself, fit into two distinct lives. He was two unique people. There was this guy who existed outside of barriers, created for the outside world, someone he maintained for pleasantries with acquaintances, the folks, the kids, the wife, and then there was this flipside piece with its own asymmetry, guarded closely and accepted solely by those like him with their own shelters, those who also fed in dark spaces and needed means to cope with it all.

They could have been each other’s path to survival. God knows they had come close during so many failed attempts, but he could never get over certain leftover childhood bumps left by the church, and so he had just passed. Passed for “manhood,” passed for Amanda, passed for a new life, and kept right on passing.

But he was tired. So fucking tired.

So the dam opened, and everything spilled forth in the loudest of ways, strangled sobs, unpretty snorts, half-assed emotions as he sought to form words to bring it all together, hiccuping all over Trevor’s dashboard and nearly puking whiskey all over himself out of a build-up of over two dozen years of nerves.

Breathing in short gulps of air in order to yield some grasp of order and calm, he heard the equivalent of a golf clap beside him and a very nonplussed, unamused response to his vomited epiphany, “So…what? I’m supposed to be overjoyed that you just suddenly woke up after all of these years?” There was a sigh and squirming from the driver’s seat. “I mean, uh, what the fuck do you expect from me here?”

Michael smiled the bitterest, sickest smile of his existence as he stuck his head in his hands and glared at strips of ancient hardened blood on the rug of the vehicle, trying desperately to retain the booze currently being housed in his belly still in that same spot. Would there be a need for the shit after all of this? He wasn’t certain. Maybe not. Sure seemed like he’d finally hit that _enough_ line now.

“I don’t expect anything,” he answered sincerely. “I just wanted to tell you that I’ve missed you…I missed you, and I shouldn’t have let you go. Ever.” He wanted to damn the tear that freed itself from his left eye, but he couldn’t necessarily find it in himself to blame it for wanting to flee. He knew the feeling. He’d always known the feeling. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, it’s a goddamn Christmas miracle come early, Mikey, because snakes can _cry_.”

He didn’t know what he’d hoped for after all of these years. Trevor was suffering, too.

But suddenly, indeed it was some sort of miracle. The mighty seas parted, clearing the night sky, as were Trevor’s arms, and he gestured toward Michael, who in turn, didn’t recognize how to take it. The familiar tightness filled his heart; old anxieties were shit to break. “T, I don’t—”

His stubborn old friend cut him off and again motioned for him to move toward him. “Bullshit, Mikey. Just shut the fuck up and come here.”

And that’s where Michael was his happiest, neglecting the warning signs flashing before his eyes to crawl over the seats so he could reach those open arms and his passage to bliss beyond them.


End file.
